[NatureNS] Global warming

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:11:47 -0300
From: Lois Codling <loiscodling@hfx.eastlink.ca>
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this process, and the political agenda it pro

Chris, I'm ghost-writing for my wife because she doesn't have the time & 
energy right now to keep up with this important topic.

Let me start by expressing my delight in your citation to Wild Flora of 
the excellent article on the invalidity of consensus in scientific 
progress. Since the primary reason Lois put the URL of the Petition 
Project on NatureNS was to challenge the argument by Kyoto supporters 
that there is a scientific consensus supporting their view, it's good to 
see you forsake that claim for your position. We agree. In fact I would 
go so far as to say that virtually every major scientific advance has 
gone against the scientific consensus. I'm probably over-generalizing, 
but not by much, I think.

Please get this straight. For Lois & me, at least, the only point of the 
petition is to show the falsehood of the claim that there is a consensus 
of scientists who agree that present global warming is significantly 
human caused. I trust others on NatureNS will accept your clear & 
correct rejection of “consensus” as a meaningful consideration in 
science, & we will hear no more about a consensus in favour of the Kyoto 
theories.

Aside from that, though, I'm afraid I have to say that your responses 
have been both unscientific & illogical. It’s very confusing. On the one 
hand, you say things like “What matters is scientific findings”; I want 
to jump up & down & say, “Yes, we’re going to deal in science”. On the 
other hand you spend most of your writing space attacking the 
credibility of those who present evidence against the conclusions of the 
IPCC. What happened to the scientific findings?

Then, when I look at some of the articles you cite, even if they were 
not ad hominem attacks, my response is disgust. Consider the "Union of 
Concerned Scientists" analysis of "doubters" that you cited, an 
anonymous article by the way, not peer reviewed, presented by an 
organization whose name is a lie - you don’t have to be a scientist to 
be part of this group of “Scientists” (if you doubt me, read their web 
site). The scientific review article that is posted on the Petition 
Project web site was written & published last year. The UCS refers only 
to an article written 12 years ago, which they allege was deliberately 
written in a way that would make it appear to have been published in the 
journal of the National Academy of Sciences. They fail to note that the 
author was for a number of years president of the National Academy, & 
might have adopted their style sheet. The last information they give 
about the Petition Project is dated in 2001. Their information is dated, 
decidedly anonymous, & in my opinion maliciously twisted. The Wikipedia 
article does not appear to be any better.

It comes down to honesty. Imagine that in your study of NS beetles, 10 
years ago you wrote an article about your discoveries relating to one 
particular group, & circulated it privately. Likely it would be in the 
format you commonly use for publication in journals, because that would 
be your habit. You work on that study & today you write an article for 
publication in a journal. What would you think of someone who challenged 
your views, but only referred to the privately circulated article at the 
beginning of your study, not to the up to date article which corrected 
errors you had made at that point, & which filled in things you had not 
known earlier? That's precisely what the UCS does with respect to the 
Petition Project.

Let's be honest. The IPCC has changed many of the things it said ten 
years ago in its more recent reports. In fact it has made changes in the 
last year. Do its early errors invalidate its findings in your eyes? Why 
do you apply a different standard to them than you do to the Petition 
Project?

The bottom line is that other than your reference to the IPCC report, 
which is what the Petition Project is challenging, your attack on the 
Petition Project is entirely ad hominem abusive. That's rotten logic & 
rotten science.

The scientific method calls for a theory to be tested by evidence. The 
Petition Project presents a paper with a theory - 
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/Article_HTML/Review_Article_HTML.html. 
The paper purports to show many evidences that the warming we see is not 
due to human causes. The scientific answer is to present evidence to the 
contrary, not just to refer to an authority that disagrees & to attack 
the character of your opponents. Given that they are writing in 
opposition to the IPCC report, citing that report against them is a 
logical & scientific fallacy. You might pull information from that 
report & show that they had not considered that information, or that 
they had misrepresented it. but just citing the report says no more 
than, "I prefer theory A to theory B". If that is your intent, please 
say so, & don't confuse the issue with added complexities.

After your list of ad hominem attacks, you wrote: "Decide for yourselves 
if you can trust the pronouncements, petitions, and disinformation 
produced by the climate change denial industry." If I were to follow 
your pattern I would ask you whether you can trust someone who uses more 
energy in a week than you or I do in months, when he tells you he is 
deeply concerned about human contributions to global warming. The claim 
that it's OK because he buys green energy is the evasion of a 
politician's politician. You know as well as I do that if Al Gore cut 
back his energy use to something reasonable, others would use that green 
energy, & there would be a net decrease in the use of non-green energy. 
When he expresses concern about the problems we allegedly face, my 
answer is to look at his energy usage & say, "Liar".

You see, when people are challenged to “decide for themselves” on the 
basis of the alleged character of an individual or group, unless they 
are deciding whom they should choose for some position, they are looking 
at the wrong issue. By all accounts Galileo was not a very nice 
character. In fact, it’s pretty clear that was the cause of a fair bit 
of the opposition he met. It did not mean his theories were wrong. 
Science does not deal in questions of who is trustworthy, but in 
questions of what fits the observed data.

Don Codling

Christopher Majka wrote:
> Hi Flora,
>
> An excellent observation, well stated. As you point out, if there is 
> to be any purpose at all to a "petition" of this sort one must have 
> faith in the substance of the petition (i.e., that the signatories 
> represent, in fact, real people and not concocted names; that they are 
> who they claim to be; that their qualifications (if real) have some 
> bearing on subject being discussed, etc.); in the process of the 
> petition (i.e., that these people were not solicited in fraudulent 
> ways); and in what organization is compiling and presenting this 
> information (i.e., they are a credible entity that can be relied upon 
> to gather and present their information in trustworthy manner).
>
> As my previous post on this topic pointed out, there are grave doubts 
> that the "Petition Project" meets any of the above criteria. My 
> concerns are with this process, and the political agenda it promotes, 
> not with the individual signatories (none of whom, even if they are 
> all "real", do I know).
>
> That said, an even more general and important point is made by Joseph 
> Romm in his Salon magazine article which I take the liberty of quoting:
>
> "In fact, science doesn't work by consensus of opinion. Science is in 
> many respects the exact opposite of decision by consensus. General 
> opinion at one point might have been that the sun goes around the 
> Earth, or that time was an absolute quantity, but scientific theory 
> supported by observations overturned that flawed worldview.
>
> "One of the most serious results of the overuse of the term 
> "consensus" in the public discussion of global warming is that it 
> creates a simple strategy for doubters to confuse the public, the 
> press and politicians: Simply come up with as long a list as you can 
> of scientists who dispute the theory. After all, such disagreement is 
> prima facie proof that no consensus of opinion exists.
>
> "So we end up with the absurd but pointless spectacle of the leading 
> denier in the U.S. Senate, James Inhofe, R-Okla., who recently put out 
> a list of more than 400 names of supposedly "prominent scientists" who 
> supposedly "recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of 
> the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming."
>
> "As it turned out, the list is both padded and laughable, containing 
> the opinions of TV weathermen, economists, a bunch of non-prominent 
> scientists who aren't climate experts, and, perhaps surprisingly, even 
> a number of people who actually believe in the consensus.
>
> "But in any case, nothing could be more irrelevant to climate science 
> than the opinion of people on the list such as Weather Channel founder 
> John Coleman or famed inventor Ray Kurzweil (who actually does "think 
> global warming is real"). Or, for that matter, my opinion -- even 
> though I researched a Ph.D. thesis at the Scripps Institution of 
> Oceanography on physical oceanography in the Greenland Sea.
>
> "What matters is scientific findings -- data, not opinions. The IPCC 
> relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, 
> which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and 
> which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that 
> work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, 
> hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant."
>
> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.html 
> <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.html>
>

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